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You might also want to think about graveyard-hate of some kind. Unless they see absolutely no play in your meta, graveyardstrats can spiral out of control fast if they are left unchecked. Both Scavenging Ooze and Phyrexian Scriptures are options that are on theme with the proliferate-extravaganza.

Oran-Rief, the Vastwood can help get the first counter on things to start proliferating. Prime Speaker Zegana is a bit mana-intensive and extremely underwhelming on an empty board, but if you reliably manage to have big creatures stick around for a turn, she can be massive. If you're willing to run it, Viral Drake gives you an alternative way to kill people and an additional way to proliferate. Luminarch Ascension draws a lot of hate, but can generate massive amounts of value and thanks to proliferate, you only need to get one counter on there to get the party started. As Foretold is a bit slow, but if it sticks for a bit, it can get pretty insane. With all those synergies, being able to play an additional card per turn can often just win you the game. Akroma's Memorial allows you to swing with your big creatures right away, provides evasion AND protects them from stuff like Anguished Unmaking or all those damagebased red boardwipes.

As for additional superfriends, Vivien Reid works well with creatureheavy strategies, and I really like Vraska, Relic Seeker, just because she is never a dead card. Ajani Unyielding is versatile and inexpensive. Just keep the balance in mind. I gradually built my Atraxa list from full creatures towards full superfriends and there was a stretch of time where none of the two strategies were really working out for me because of the mix. Some walkers can be huge fun in a +1/+1-counter-deck and vice versa, I'd just recommend you stay committed to one of the two as your main strategy.

Potential cuts:
As much as I love the counter-synergies, quite a few of the actual proliferate-cards aren't all that great imho. Inexorable Tide just felt like a pretty clunky win-more card most of the times I drew it, and both Spread the Sickness and, to a lesser degree, Steady Progress are pretty overpriced for what they do, especially if your main wincon are massive creatures, where one additional counter often makes little difference. Contagion Clasp and Contagion Engine can also get pretty mana intensive, but they at least provide repeatable value without additional requirements.
Revoke Existence feels kinda narrow. If you're running this with a trget in mind, by all means, keep it in, but you might want to keep your eyes open for alternatives like Utter End or Anguished Unmaking that hit more things.
I'm not sure you have enough targets to really take advantage of Skullclamp. Mind's Eye felt pretty slow when I was running it, especially because the deck doesn't do tons of instantspeed stuff, so keeping mana open for it gets a bit sketchy. Mind Unbound is only worth running if your playgroup consistently allows it to stick around for a few turns. Otherwise you mmight be better off running something like Sphinx's Revelation or Blue Sun's Zenith.
I'm not sure if I'd run three pillowfort options unless you're facing a lot of token strategies. Your deck looks like it should usually have some big blockers available, And if you don't people are usually fine with paying to take down key walkers.

Of course, it all comes down to your local meta, personal preferences/playstyle and (sadly) budget, so disregard anything I said if it doesn't feel right to you. I do hope some of it helps though ^^

4 weeks ago

As you have added this list to the superfriends hub and mention that creatures would be the first thing you'd cut, I'll mainly focus my recommendations on the superfriends theme.
A lot of the suggestions I am going to make might seem fairly obvious if you have seen more conventional superfriends lists, but incase you have not, I'll make them anyways.

Ok, after finishing this, I might need to add a TLDR:
Subthemes are great, they make your deck unique. But if you want your deck to be reasonably streamlined, you might want to keep your subthemes just that: subtheme(s) to an actual main theme. Build your shell with that main theme in mind and then see how much space remains for your subtheme(s). Don't get caught in minute synergies between subtheme cards, keep asking yourself "does this go with my main theme or AT LEAST really hit the core of my subtheme?" The rest develops as you play the list and tinker around with it.
Below you find some recommendations I would make for a superfriends shell. But take this all with a grain of salt, I am by no means an amazing player, nor an expert on deckbuilding.

Planeswalker Synergies:

Let's start this off with Primevals' Glorious Rebirth. This card is just plain insane. It allows you to play your walkers early on in the game without worrying about them dying too much and then get them all back in one backbreaking turn later on. Doubling Season into this has won me quite a few games.

Oath of Nissa is cheap, rarely fails to find something you want, and makes casting your walkers easier early on, which is nice. Oath of Gideon gets you tokens to block with, and the additional loyalty is often more relevant than one might think. Oath of Jace, Oath of Liliana and Oath of Ajani are definitely playable as well, but I think the others are less situational/ do more at their costs, so I tend to stick with those. It's worth noting that all the oaths are legendary, so they do come back with Primevals' Glorious Rebirth.

The Chain Veil is a classic Superfriends card, it's legendary so it comes back with Primevals' Glorious Rebirth and it makes for some insane turns once you have multiple Walkers online, especially if you can untap it, for example with Tezzeret the Seeker (infinite activation combos are possible here). I've heard about people actually cutting it because they find it a bit clunky (don't have one myself yet, so I can't really comment on that), but it's definitely a powerful card.

Settle the Score can be awkward. There is better singletarget removal available and it needs a target in order to uptick your walker. On the other hand, being able to ult a walker out of nowhere can be pretty sweet. Probably not an optimized card, but decent nontheless.

Extra turn spells like Nexus of Fate or Savor the Moment can allow for extra activations on your walker abilities or just win you the game outright if you can build a board of creatures before going into your extra turn and swinging.

Ramp:

The problem I see with your mana acceleration is that most of it is either pretty slow, susceptible to removal, or both. Gyre Sage for example needs you to get counters onto it to be effective and dies to any kind of creature removal (I still like the card when running +1/+1-counter-synergies and a certain amount of creatures, it just doesn't always ramp you very well). Mox Opal requires you to have metalcraft online, something which I found hard early on within a few test-mulligans I did, and the later the game gets, the lower the impact of a 0-Cost Manarock becomes. Astral Cornucopia and Everflowing Chaliceboth need a proliferate or two to really shine. Not to mention, if you are geared toward your friends, they might be teching for you as well, and something like a Vandalblastcould hose your ramp pretty hard.

As Foretold is slow, but can get out of control fast, even more so when paired with proliferate. Definitely a fun card.

Another piece of acceleration that is good on it's own and has proliferate-synergy is Coalition Relic.

Thaumatic CompassFlip is a card i recently started running and I've been loving it so far. It fixes your mana and/or finds you lands if you need that, and it flips into a land that can tap for mana and protect your walkers, while being reasonably hard to destroy itself.

If you untap with Mirari's Wake on the board, the game can often just be over, and the +1/+1 works well both with the tokens from your walkers as well as the creatures that you're still running.

Walkers

There are quite a few great walkers out there and I won't name them all (you're running quite a few of them already). Generally anything that gives you decent cardadvantage, protects itself (usually by making tokens to block with), or kills something the turn it comes down is fine, anything with a combination of 2 of those on its first two abilities is really good. Ults are a lot more relevant in this deck than in most others, as you actually have a pretty reliable chance of getting them off, but I'd still be careful with running a walker JUST because of it's ult. Run cards that you're happy to draw even without a doubling season on the board.

Ugin, the Spirit Dragon is the big bad dragon in the room. It's amazing, it wins games, is colorless so you can play it in other decks, but it's pricey.

Vraska, Relic Seeker is a walker I've grown to love recently. Her tokens are great, her removal hits a lot of things and actually gets you and artifact that somewhat ramps you, and her ult often allows you to just take one opponent out then and there (not to mention the fact that it's actually quite easy to reach her ult even without doubling season, seeing as her first ability is +2).

Elspeth, Knight-Errant is useful early on to make and pump tokens, and in your deciding turns her emblem can allow you to wipe your opponents boards while your creatures survive and swing for lethal. It also protects your board in case you can't finish off all opponents at once and have to let them untap. Vivien Reid does a similar job.

Counterspells in EDH are a tricky topic. My playgroup doesn't really run any and I hate playing against them so I don't want to start things, but if you see your big spells getting countered repeatedly, you might want to at least run something along the lines of Swan Song, Counterspell and/or Spell Pierce to protect them. Cards like Mystic Confluence or the more expensive Cryptic Command are great because you can just use their other modes in games where you don't want to counter any spells.

Unlike Ghostly Prison or Propaganda, Norn's Annex actually protects your walkers as well as your face. The problem is that aggro/go wide decks are often happier to pay life than mana, particularly early on.

As you already have Teferi's Protection, arguably the better card, this might be a bit overkill, but Comeuppance can be another emergency button kind of card (and this one can actually sometimes kill your opponent).

Miscellaneous:

Some cards that are either just fun to play or decent on their own in the deck (most of these aren't all that optimized ^^).

Helm of the Host costs a LOT of mana to get it on the board and equipped. If your opponents can then remove it for little cost, it's pretty bad. But if it sticks around for a few turns, it can do insane things. An army of Atraxas (all of which proliferate at the end of turn) alone is amazing, but you can also abuse the effects of other creatures (like Deepglow Skate) or combo this with Gideon of the Trials to make a nonlegendary copy of the walker and an emblem on the same turn, forcing your opponents to deal with both walkers before they can kill you. And if they can't kill both before you untap, you can make another copy. And so on. Also synergises with both Doubling Season for extra tokens as well as Primevals' Glorious Rebirth for being another legendary permanent.

Thief of Sanity has been showing up in our playgroup quite a bit. At worst it's just a 2/2 flyer to block with, at it's best it creates this second hand for you that sticks around even if the thief dies and gives you the option to exile your opponents' best cards and use them against them.

If you want to stick with more of the Artifact- and/or +1/+1-counter-synergies, both Hangarback Walker and Walking Ballista are amazing cards on their own that can take over games once paired with some kind of enabler.

If you want to add to your infect-arsenal, both Ichor Rats and Viral Drake are decent cards to run. Be warned though, quite a few players dislike infect in EDH, and some playgroups even have houserules increasing the number of counters needed to kill someone to 15 or 20.

What to cut:
In the end, this comes down to you. There might be subotimal cards that you really enjoy playing even if they don't increase your chances at winning. Or a certain sweet combo might justify running a card that is clunky in a lot of situations (Helm of the Host is definitely such a card for me).

Generally, I'd start with the cards that don't really go with any of your main themes. Stuff like Brago, King Eternal, Muldrotha, the Gravetide, Derevi, Empyrial Tactician or Etrata, the Silencer(proliferating assassination counters doesn't do anything btw, they have to be on different creatures; just in case you missed that). If you really want effects like that in your deck, try to find it on things that work better with your core themes (like Aminatou, the Fateshifter being able to blink important permanents the turn she comes into play and without having to attack, while working with planeswalker synergies, Primevals' Glorious Rebirth allowing you to return most of your core pieces from your graveyard in one big blowout or extra turn spells allowing you to untap permanents while also giving you extra planeswalker activations).

Then, if you want to focus on one theme and cut back on the others, start with those pieces that worst on their own, like Mox Opal doing literally nothing if you don't have Metalcraft turned on, or Corpsejack Menace being a plain 4/4 for 4 if you aren't putting counters on creatures. If you only have cards remaining that work on their own or with little buildaround, keep asking yourself "would I rather have this or something that goes with my core theme". At this point you can just keep trying around, cutting what feels bad to you, adding some stuff, maybe going back if it changes for the worse, but try to keep your bigger picture in mind. Keep enough of the core mechanics (card draw, ramp, removal, proactive plays) and always ask yourself "what does this do in my deck, why is it the best option, what could I be running instead?". The answer to this question can very well be "I like playing it" or "it looks cool" but this keeps you from playing cards in your deck without reason.

Sooo there you have it, my 2 cents (or maybe 20) on Atraxa Superfriends. There are quite a few expensive cards up there that I don't even own myself, so in case you're interested in my current list, you can find that here.

4 months ago

I have played super friends a few different ways it is pretty fun but actually winning can be hard. Planeswalkers are awesome and some of them do win games but I felt like with each deck there needed to be another way to win. My most successful version was with Ramos, Dragon Engine. He can get pumped up enough to be able to one shot someone and is able to accelerate you into some huge plays.

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